A thumbnail view is a small image on a computer desktop that represents something, for example, a program or device that can be selected or activated by a mouse click. A desktop thumbnail view is typically linked with an application running on a single machine. Thumbnail views may also be correlated with one another within a single application. For instance, many photo viewers allow clicking on one of the thumbnail views in a region to trigger the display of a bigger version thereof. Microsoft® PowerPoint® has an edit mode with thumbnails on one side of the screen that can be used to select the slide being displayed in the main edit region. In multi-head mode, a thumbnail browser on a private screen enables a user to select what slide to display on the main screen.
Many electronic whiteboard systems such as eBeam®, SmartBoard®, etc. also use thumbnails to allow users to create new blank screens on which they can draw or to switch back to previous drawings. Systems such as Classroom 2000 or NoteLook allow one or more users with personal devices to add their own annotations to material presented during a meeting, and in some cases share those notes, see, e.g., Desney S. Tan, B. Meyers, and M. Czerwinski, 2004, “WinCuts: manipulating arbitrary window regions for more effective use of screen space,” Proceedings, Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Vienna, Austria, Apr. 24-29, 2004; and Chiu, P., A. Kapuskar, S. Reitmeier, and L. Wilcox “NoteLook: Taking Notes in Meetings with Digital Video and Ink,” Proceedings, ACM Multimedia '99, Orlando, Fla.
A common thread in these prior systems is the use of thumbnail viewers as a means to select display content within the same program or software system. None of them enables a user to manage, in a comprehensive yet easy to use fashion, heterogeneous content across screens, displays, monitors, etc. driven by different machines and operating systems located in and/or connected to one or more interactive workspaces such as a meeting room or set of meeting rooms. As application sharing between networked machines becomes more common, so does the need to easily switch between all types of content being displayed thereon. The present invention addresses this need.